


The Head and the Hands

by Hokuto



Category: Metropolis (2001)
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Family, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-21
Updated: 2019-09-21
Packaged: 2020-10-18 16:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20642060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hokuto/pseuds/Hokuto
Summary: The start of Duke Red and Rock's relationships and the cracks that begin to show.





	The Head and the Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Aquatics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aquatics/gifts).

> I hope this is to your taste! I loved your prompts and having an excuse to watch this wonderful movie again.
> 
> The title is from the parable in the original silent movie "Metropolis."

He only accepted the invitation because his advisors insisted on it.

("Advisors," hah! But at the time they had been true advisors, some of them, even friends: men without fear, who would tell him bluntly when he had gone too far on some dead-end path or withdrawn too much into himself. That would pass, and in days to come he would call those who remained around him sycophants; they would shrug, embarrassed, and agree.)

The invitation was to visit some sort of school or home for the orphans and other lost children of the war, presumably as a bid to secure his patronage. Nothing that Duke Red had not done before, though it had been some time. Within a few minutes of arrival he had fallen back into the routine of such visits. He toured the sturdily worn facilities; he lunched, rather more respectably than seemed fitting given the school's state, with the desperately charming principal; a few of the best and brightest pupils were trotted out to demonstrate their skill at music or maths or sport. Mostly maths and sciences, which at least showed the principal had some familiarity with her target.

Then the principal wanted him to give a speech to the assembled children. "It needn't be very long," she said with an artificially coy glance from beneath her eyelashes. "Just a little encouragement for the poor dears. Something to excite them and brighten up their dreary days... Perhaps a war story, or something about your Ziggurat project?"

He had at least three-quarters of a mind to refuse her. A war story for war orphans - foolishness! Those children likely knew as much of the war as he. As for his Ziggurat and all its related works, what could such ragged youth know? How could they appreciate its grandeur and might, the scope of its complex simplicity, its majesty? What good would it do to dangle the hope of better things before them when they must know it could never be theirs? Oh, two or three of them might manage, by titanic effort, to study their way into a real school and from there climb to some position as a research assistant or engineer; the rest had in their future nothing but the back-breaking, muscle-tearing toil of brute labor or the shiftless idling and grumbling of those left behind by the advantages of robots.

Yet with those thoughts, Duke Red stirred himself to pity. Should children fated to such a gloomy lot not dream? Did they not deserve a little light to carry with them, a shining memory that, if not aspired to, could still provide comfort in darker days?

And so he went out onto the school's heavily scratched auditorium stage and spoke to the restless assembly. A little slowly, at first, having lost some ease of public speaking in his solitary grief, but soon the banked embers of his passion for the Ziggurat flared into reborn flames and drove him to heights of oratory he had not reached since -

Of course, this honor was not especially appreciated by most of the children, who only wanted to be released from the tedious obligation of listening to go and play. Red noted a few attentive faces, however, and one in particular: not one of the star pupils met earlier, but a rough-looking boy with chestnut hair, bruises on his cheek, and bright, clear blue eyes. When the duke had wound down his extemporizing to unenthusiastic applause and prepared to return to his car, it was that boy who darted out of the dispersing crowd to accost him, calling, "Sir! Sir, wait! I had a question!"

The principal, who had chosen to accompany Red out, snatched the boy by his arm as Red turned, and she snarled, "Don't pester the gentleman! Such dreadful manners - Duke Red, my humblest apologies for this -"

"No, let him ask," Red said, the unaccustomed pity still strong in him - and the boy did have such clear eyes. "It was rude of me not to take questions after my little speech, after all."

"Well - of course, whatever you say," said the principal, releasing the boy and patting her undisturbed bun. "I wouldn't dream of - but don't waste this kind gentleman's time, Rock! He has so many important matters to attend to!"

The boy evinced none of the shyness that afflicted so many children once put on the spot, but looked up at Red with appealing directness to ask, "Why are you building the Ziggurat?"

Red had not touched particularly on such matters as "why" in his speech; on another day - earlier on that day, even - he might have been irritated, brushed off the answer as self-evident to anyone with a brain. In the moment, pity-moved and generous, he smiled at the boy. "A fine question! Although not one with a simple answer, I'm afraid." And his human chauffeur, outside in the snow, was rubbing his thin-gloved hands together, huffing into them as his breath steamed through his fingers in smoky puffs. "Perhaps the simplest is this: once I thought of something so powerful, so magnificent, I could not bear for it not to exist. I had to make it a reality, for myself and for all humanity. Do you understand?"

"I think so," said the boy. "And then when you're done, you'll sit on top and be the most powerful man in the world."

Such astuteness, to see through the careful armor Red had built around his designs to their heart! Not perfect astuteness, but still. And he did have those wonderful clear eyes - the wrong color, and yet... "I suppose I may be. Or whoever is chosen to sit there, for it will be a great responsibility, as well."

"All right, then, you have your answer, and you've kept the duke long enough," the principal said, taking the boy's arm again. "Back to your room, now."

"But I want -"

"Madam, I will let you know when I consider my time wasted! Now -" What had she said the boy's name was? "- young Rock, if you would truly like to continue this conversation, perhaps you should come with me."

"Can I? Really?"

The principal's mouth gaped like a broken robot's. "Duke Red, I don't think - not entirely proper - surely some other -"

"Of course you may," Red said, and he pulled off his own scarf to wrap around the boy's thin shoulders - the child had only a dull, threadbare school uniform, unfit for the midwinter weather. "I'll have someone sent along shortly to handle the details. Come, Rock. We have quite a lot to discuss, I think."

His advisors, it seemed, had been onto something all along, although Red doubted an impromptu adoption was what they'd had in mind when they had told him to get out of his office. But Rock's clear vision, his boldness, his understanding (and the eyes, unlike yet like!) - perhaps Rock was exactly what Red needed.

* * *

Rock applied himself to his new life as he had never applied himself to anything but fights at the school. The tutors that Duke Red hired for him were not amazed by the grades they handed down, but they always applauded his efforts; the maids remarked to each other how nice it was to clean for someone who at least tried to pick up after himself, unlike some they could name; the men (and occasional women) in white coats who always attended the duke at work frequently patted Rock's head and commented on his attentiveness, how keen he was to listen and join in even when he didn't fully understand their technical conversation.

Not that any of them mattered. They weren't the important ones.

Duke Red was not an easy figure to impress, especially since he had thrown himself headfirst into work on the Ziggurat as soon as he had seen Rock settled in at his mansion. Rock couldn't be disappointed by that, not after the way Duke Red had spoken about the Ziggurat, but his frantic efforts to please were spurred on by the dual challenge: to prove himself worthy of helping with the Ziggurat and to earn his new father's approval.

Unfortunately, it was not his studies or his cleaning or even his sincere attempts to learn about the Ziggurat's construction that brought the duke's attention back to him.

Meals at the duke's mansion were nothing like those at the school. There was always enough food for him, sometimes even more than he could eat (he had never imagined such a thing was possible), and he had to be very quiet and neat because it was only him and the duke at the table, with no noisy, messy crowds of other children to hide in. Rock didn't mind the change, exactly, but it was so very different. And even worse when they weren't alone and other people ate at the mansion, which they often did, because those people were important guests and Rock wasn't to speak to them at all unless they spoke to him first.

The guests that night, though, were loud and blustering and almost as messy as children. They dripped sauce and spilled wine as Rock carefully cut up his meal the way one maid had shown him, and they didn't seem to notice his existence at all. Which was fine until, during some political talk Rock didn't understand, the duke said, "Once I've finished the Ziggurat -"

"Oh, no! You're not still on about that mad project of yours, are you?" said one guest, a stout man in a cream-colored suit. "Such an idiotic toy to throw away money on."

"It's not."

All eyes at the table turned to Rock: the man's and the other guests' and the duke's, icy-green. An elderly guest said, "Hmm? Oh, yes, the child, the child. Odd, I thought it had -"

"Ssh, no, don't bring that up - that was -"

"Ho, so you've an opinion, too," the man in the cream suit said. "Go on, little boy. Tell me what you think of Red's pie-in-the-sky dreaming."

It was a mistake, Rock knew it was, but he felt too hot and light with anger to stop himself. "It's not stupid. It's not _pie_," his hands clenching on the clean white tablecloth. "It's strong and it's beautiful and it _deserves_ to exist, and if you can't see that then you're the stupid -"

"That's enough," the duke said in an iron voice. "I believe you're finished with dinner, Rock. Go to your room."

His plate was still mostly full, but Rock climbed out of his chair, said, "Yes, sir," and left.

Even in his room he couldn't do what he would have done at the school when he was upset: couldn't yell, couldn't scrap with anyone, couldn't break anything that was already broken or wouldn't be missed. He could only walk in little circles over and over again, trapped by gilt wallpaper and heavy wooden furniture and soft, thick rugs, released only when some hours later Duke Red stormed in. "Impertinent little wretch! How dare you talk to my guests in that way, embarrassing yourself and me - that child never would have -"

"He insulted the Ziggurat!" Rock's eyes stung, but he wasn't going to cry, and he hadn't been _wrong_. "I was just trying to stand up for you. He doesn't understand how grand it is! He's a fool!"

Duke Red snorted, unexpectedly, and his tense shoulders relaxed. "Oh, indeed, Robert Teilhard is a great fool, and the rest of the Teilhards even greater ones. But they are extremely wealthy, and as they say, a fool and his money..." He sat down on Rock's bed and patted the duvet beside him; Rock hesitated, afraid that the duke's anger couldn't have really passed so quickly, but then dared to sit next to him, and the duke smoothed down Rock's hair. "Which is why it is so important to me that you behave and make a good impression. The Ziggurat is not easy to build, you know; if I can convince Teilhard to invest in it and bring along some of his military contracts, that will smooth this stage of construction."

"Oh." Rock had never thought of why Duke Red would entertain so many guests, but it made sense. Of course it wasn't because the duke _liked_ having so many strangers, even messy awful ones like the Teilhards, over for dinner. It was all for the Ziggurat. Rock could understand that. "I'm sorry -" And he dared a little bit further. "- Father."

Duke Red's mouth thinned, and he took his hand off Rock's head. "Well. So long as you understand. If I can't trust you to act properly around guests, you'll have to eat in the kitchen with the servants."

Rock had only lived in the mansion for a few weeks and already knew there was no greater humiliation than to be treated as one of the servants, even if they did help him sometimes when he didn't understand something. "Yes, sir. I won't do it again. No matter how stupid they are."

Another small snort, and then the duke rose from the bed. "See that you don't. And don't run off from your tutors to trail after me. The Teilhards will be here for another two days. I can't afford to be distracted with you underfoot."

Rock's eyes stung again, and he bit back the questions he had wanted to ask. "Yes, sir."

* * *

Rock was exploring on a rainy, no-lessons day when he found the girl's room.

Most of the room looked like his own - the same furniture, the same wallpaper, the same rugs - but the hangings and duvet on the bed were a different color and pattern, and when he pulled open a drawer in one dresser, he was met with neatly folded, lacy summer dresses. He opened more drawers and discovered socks with little bows, soft scarves and shawls in pale colors, some things that he guessed were girls' underwear, and a few drawers that held girls' toys packed away in tissue paper.

One of the toys was a beautiful painted top that he pulled out, thinking that if the girl didn't want it anymore (and if it was wrapped up in a drawer, surely she didn't), he might as well play with it. Removing it revealed a framed portrait beneath: a young girl with wavy blonde hair and green eyes like the duke's, in profile, gazing thoughtfully into the distance. No one he recognized. Not many women were guests at Duke Red's mansion, and even fewer girls.

Rock started to shut the drawer again, and a voice behind him said, "Young master! You're not supposed to be in here!"

He jumped, then shoved the top back into the drawer and turned around. It was only one of the maids, an older woman carrying a feather duster who he'd seen often but not spoken to much. "I was only looking around," he said. "And the door wasn't locked, so I thought -"

"Oh, I can believe you thought! But goodness, child, after that little row at dinner I should think you'd be more careful about poking your nose in anywhere else."

Rock flushed at her knowing about his humiliation and said, more meanly than he really meant to, "What's so special about this room, anyway? It's just a silly girl's room."

"Young master!" She clicked her tongue and shook the duster at him. "Don't ever say that around Master Red - I suppose he hasn't told you about her, then."

"About who?"

"About whom, you mean - about the young miss. Miss Tima." The maid glanced around the room and swept the duster over the nearest lampshade. "Master Red's daughter."

The word _daughter_ hit Rock like a punch in the stomach.

"It was an illness that took her. Very sudden. There was nothing the doctors could do. Such a tragedy - the master can still hardly bear to speak of it. He didn't do any work properly for months, not until he came back from that orphanage with you." Another brush of the duster of a chest of drawers as Rock stood numb. "She was such a sweet child, so clever and quiet and kind..." The maid snorted, continuing to dust around the room. "And stubborn, too, when she had a mind to be, not that you'd have guessed it from the way Master Red went on at the funeral. Poor man," with a sympathetic sigh. "He hasn't been the same since, and who can blame him? Don't we all miss her, the charming little lady, and us not even blood kin? But it's good that he's been working again, and that's thanks to you, young master." She flicked Rock's shoulder with the duster playfully. "Now, get on out of here, and don't let anyone catch you in this room again or you'll be out on your ear."

Rock nodded and went in a dull haze back to his room, but one look at it and its awful resemblance to dead Tima's and he fled to the neutral safety of the mansion's library. He didn't like reading much beyond what was necessary for his lessons, but at least the rows of heavy, leather-bound books didn't mock him like his room did: _replacement! Replacement! He doesn't want _you_, he just wishes you were her!_

The grandfather clock in the corner ticked away several minutes as Rock huddled in a padded wingback chair, haunted by the green-eyed girl in the portrait buried among her toys. Duke Red's _real_ child, _real_ family, the one he wanted to have at dinners, the one who wouldn't embarrass him, the one he'd never throw away.

Another minute ticked past, the clock's brass chimes ringing the half-hour, and Rock thought, _But I'm the one who's alive._

He couldn't be a lost daughter, but he could be a better son. He would prove it. He could behave, he could do whatever Duke Red asked, he could live and do everything for his father and his father's dreams and he wouldn't ask for anything because he wouldn't need anything, not as long as his father acknowledged him. He'd be so much better than some stupid little girl, and when his father sat at the crown of the Ziggurat he'd let Rock be there, too, at his side...

When one of the servants came into the library an hour later to fetch a technical manual for the duke, he found Rock bent over a history book, laboriously sounding out the names of Roman generals and consuls. The servant hid his small smile and went softly through the library to get the book without disturbing the boy, never knowing with what deadly serious intent Rock studied the nature of war.

* * *

The Ziggurat grew floor by floor, cocooned in scaffolding and cranes, engulfing neighborhoods as its base spread to support its massive weight; and so, too, grew Rock, to a much lesser extent. The boy's new height and maturing features threw Red off-balance in a way he didn't care to explore, and he buried the discomfort in work and politics. He had tried to send Rock off to boarding school - a fine school, distinguished and of good repute, though not Red's own alma mater - and Rock had refused in a brief but bitter argument ending in uneasy truce. Red ignored the boy; the boy remained sullenly devoted, dogging Red's footsteps as usual but maddeningly silent and obtrusive in his attempts to be unobtrusive, all clumsy elbows and knees from his growth spurt.

_Too attached_, Red thought, marking up schematics for the next floor of the Ziggurat with harsh, heavy strokes as Rock watched him from across the drafting table. He'd let the boy get too attached. An easy mistake to have made in those early days, when he had still been mourning and Rock's bright-eyed admiration had appealed rather than repelled, when allowing the occasional "Father" to slide by unremarked had seemed harmless. An easy mistake, but a mistake. He should never have been so soft on Rock. Certainly he should have insisted on the boarding school.

Another bold slash of his pen, altering and upgrading an outdated ventilation system. Too soft, yes. That was the problem. He would put his foot down at dinner, send Rock to the school, and after a few years of proper education there would be no more nonsense. And in those years of peace, Red could concentrate on the Ziggurat, sort out the squabbling among the ranks of the malcontent Malduks and unite them to make a decent showing in the next elections...

He glanced up, looking for one of his rulers to fix a corner, and by accident caught Rock's intent gaze. Steady and clear and too bright, too blue, all wrong, and Red snapped, "What are you, a dog? Don't look at me with such pathetic eyes. Get out! I'm trying to work!"

Rock started back, some sharp expression flickering across his face; then he cast his eyes down, saying, "Yes, Father," with spiteful stubbornness.

But even after the boy had shut the door behind himself, Red couldn't concentrate on the plans. He got up from the drafting table and paced a moment to work out his restless annoyance, then turned on the radio to a news channel. The international news, dire as it was, kept his mind occupied just enough that he could resume his corrections with a lighter touch. He was even humming to himself when the newscaster said, "And from Japan, this shocking tale of a doctor gone mad! His amazing claim to replicate humanity in machinery with such fidelity that even the robot can't recognize its own nature, and the horrifying experiments that made it possible! Full story after this message from our sponsors."

Red's pen stopped.

It moved again only once, after the insipid commercials ended and the broadcast had resumed, to scribble a single name in his notes:

_Dr. Laughton_


End file.
